Send Your Name to Mars
The Mars Science Laboratory are sending some microchips (what a quaint old fashioned term that is!) up to Mars on the next mission and are allowing you to Send Your Name to Mars on the chips. That was too good an opportunity to miss so on behalf of all our readers, here is the message I’m sending to Mars.
Streetshirts
I love the idea of Streetshirts but I’ll reserve judgement until I see the results of my first order. It’s yet another custom t-shirt printing shop but you can, in theory, upload your own vector graphic designs to be printed. I say in theory as the various types of files I uploaded wouldn’t display, I just saw a black box even though I used totally industry standard software (Adobe Illustrator exported to pdf as they stated) so, in order to avoid having a white box around the design (which would ruin it) I’ve had to print onto a white t-shirt. They also really need to sort out the FAQ/Help pages as they just don’t give the right information. There are several other niggles with the interface and the unclear pricing model – my shirt jumped from £17.99 to £34.99 just before I ordered it and I couldn’t work out which change I’d made caused it – my fault for doing it at 1AM. I should get the tee today or tomorrow and I’ll report back how it looks.
Spoonflower
I’m having a make do and mend creative day today so I was chuffed to find Spoonflower which lets you print your own custom fabric on-demand. There’s no minimum order and the prices are reasonable. If I’d discovered this a few weeks ago then mrs grom would have been getting cushion covers for her birthday (I’m so romantic aren’t I?).
Everyone is invited to the beta club
I’m a sucker for beta programs – I love nosing at what people are developing so I’m signing up with Invite Share, a site to allow people to share invitations to websites and programs in beta.
Urb-Ex Not Recommended Here
As much as I love Urban Exploration, there are some places I wouldn’t necessarily venture such as what’s left of the Manhattan Project – I’m happy with these photos instead.
Sausage Stacking, Muffin Managing, Mocha Brewing Robots
People used to be scared of robots taking over the world and making humans redundant. That would be a greater fear of mine if these FlexPicker Robots weren’t tethered to a power outlet. Mind you the utter cutedness of the coffee brewing mangabot is undeniable.
How Teenagers Consume Media
Matthew Robson, aged 15 and 7 months, wrote a short report entitled How Teenagers Consume Media whilst on an internship at Morgan Stanley. It’s caused quite a stir in the media which I find highly amusing since, based on my experience, it’s about 99% true. It’s odd that the majority of adults don’t realise some very simple facts such as teenagers don’t use eBay as it requires a credit card or tying in to a bank account or that many teens don’t use Twitter as you it uses up your SMS allowance. Worth a read.
227 Words You Can’t Say On YouTube
Apparently there are 227 Words You Can’t Say On YouTube and this youtube video lists them all (obviously NSFW). It’e the interweb’s very own version of ”’George Carlin””s infamous”’seven words you can never say on television”’ sketch.
Star Wars: Uncut
Star Wars: Uncut is a web project where 473 people (including you if you want to take part) can re-edit 15 second scenes from ”’A New Hope”’. Once it’s done they’ll stitch it all back together and maybe we’ll settle if, indeed, ”’Han Shot First”’.
levelHead
Now this is the future of gaming! levelHead is an augmented reality game similar to the zombie one that went round a couple of weeks ago. But this is, to my mind, much more innovative. I can’t wait for Julian Oliver to package the code and distribute it.
Color Picker Pen
The idea of the Color Picker Pen, ie: that you can scan anything and the pen will mix the correct colour ink to match, is fantastic but then it says it does it via RGB which is a subtractive method of colouring and just wouldn’t work for this. Oh well, nice idea.
Dub Selector
If you need to get that Michael Jackson groove from the previous post out of your brain then hop over to Dub Selector and jam to your own dub track in a matter of seconds. There are plenty of others, just click on the bar at the bottom.
Dan P – go make a glitch version – that’s an order!
Eternal moonwalk
I quite like the idea of Eternal moonwalk despite the fact that it’s a tribute to Michael Jackson.
cheers Dan
Databent UrbEx
Friend of Prime Towers Dan has just informed me of his latest venture which I’ll let him tell you about;
‘For anyone interested I’ve put out my first video release on my netlabel. Gusset – Databent UrbEx is an abridged 10min version of the audio/video set I played at the Black Swan last month and features “databent” (ie intentionally corrupted) versions of my Urban Exploring photos with drone/dj soundtrack. Sample images here, video here.’
Nice work fella.
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Konami Code Sites – you should be able to work it out from the rather large clue in the title of this post! If not, shame on you. (Love some of the sites here – on pandagames, it turns off the adverts on the site – nice touch!)
cheers Dan
Old Apps
At first glance, OldApps.com seems pretty pointless. It’s a site that hosts lots of, yep, you’ve guessed it, old versions of popular software. It’s also, surprisingly, useful for a variety of things such as testing if it’s a recent update that’s destroyed your computer or getting an older, underpowered machine to work when it can’t run new bloated versions of software. It also has old Mac software too.
Free Walnut and paper drum machine
This weekend I’ll be on the lookout for walnuts in my local shop just so I can try out this Free Walnut and paper drum machine. You don’t need walnuts but you do need a webcam and a piece of paper along with the software from these awesome dudes.
Introducing the Google OS
Google have finally announced the Google Chrome OS – a brand new web-based Operating System. Not available to consumers until about a year from now but should be worth keeping an eye out for it, open source, free, lightweight blah, blah, blah.
Gary: Landlord of the Flies
I’ve had some ‘interesting’ landlords in the past but none as extreme as Gary: Landlord of the Flies. (start from the end and work up).
VLC 1.0 is Out!
Woo and indeed Yay! VLC aka VideoLAN is finally out as version 1.0 (for non geeks this means it’s finally hit a full release version, all previous versions have been classed as ‘beta’ ie: non complete). VLC is a fully free, open-source media player and recorder which works on virtually every Operating System and has the most comprehensive set of codecs out there (which means you can throw any format of audio or video and it will understand it and play it happily). If you don’t have a copy yet or if you, god forbid, still use Windows Media Player then go grab a copy and make it your default. (I should probably mention that I also use Media Player Classic and winamp too).
Don’t Copy That 2
Oh deary me. If you remember the goddawful, and yet very funny, Don’t Copy That Floppy then you’ll be somewhat disturbed to hear that coming soon is Don’t Copy That 2, yet again featuring MC Double Def DP (which still sounds dirty to me). Watch the trailer and see innocent people having their homes raided by mask wearing armed thugs, teenagers thrown into jail with no due process or fair trial and scenes of prison rape (almost). And the music really sounds like another infamous interweb meme.
Open Directories Subreddit
If you ever visit reddit then you may be aware of the subreddits you can subscribe to. A new one has just started called Open Directories which has a very useful mix of stuff available – some of questionable legality it has to be said but just as a general resource for fonts, images, e-books, videos, ringtones and loads more, it’s worth a bookmark.
5-in-1 network admin’s cable
I just spotted this diy 5-in-1 network cable on reddit and remembered blogging it when it was first featured in the first issue of the fantastic Make Magazine but I never got round to making it. Since that time I’ve probably needed it about once a month so I really should get round to making one.
Want to Be Eating Hospital Food?
Back for some more pretty one-track minded blogs – Hospital Food made me dig up the old Airline Meals blog (which seems to have stopped updating) – shame as I was interested in seeing which was worse!.. The folks who run the hospital one also have another one-track blog – Happiest People Ever (guess who forgot to smile for the birdie).
Webcam Win
Whoa! The only thing that could make this video for Sour’s Hibi no Neiro (Tone of everyday) any better would be to watch it with yooouuutuuube. An astoundingly complicated video.
Parp! Your Ultimate Guide to 80′s Sax Solos
And there I was about to moan that this ‘Ultimate Guide to 80′s Sax Solos‘ didn’t include Baker Street when Wikipedia informed me it was released in 1978. I’ve now listened to one too many parping interludes for anyone’s sanity.
Things to Say During Sex
In case you’re ever stuck, here’s a handy chart of things to say during sex, just print and stick to your ceiling.
Chris Packham’s The Smiths references
I’d heard several weeks ago that naturalist and tv presenter ”’Chris Packham”’ had made a bet with soemone that he could get a Smiths reference into every episode of the recent BBC Springwatch series and here’s the proof. It was rather surreal the way he shoehorned them in though.
